I have been thinking that on the matter of Magic vs. Wizards it may be better to not confirm anything: Those commies may like messing with their soviet industrial technomagic, but real wizards thrive in secrecy, Tovarisch. Wizards may have known about magic before the Lulzsec revelation. Or not. Until someone actually needs the plot of a story, we may never know for sure...
My take on the wizards, 2014-2020, version two:
The Mad Eye Regency:
After the Boskone war, the wizards were heavily damaged, and the entire faction was on the verge of a downwards spiral of depression. For several years after the war, the entire faction retreated to seclusion, dealing only with other Fantasy fen, and began to arm thenselves and rebuild. Fen call those years the Mad Eye Regency, due to the paranoia and preparations the faction went through those years. The Regency lasted from the 2015 elections, which saw the war minirter Cynthia Lucklold narrowly avoid losing her post, to 2020, when the wizards finally signed the PEPPER teatry, the last important faction to do so, and returned to fenspace.
As with most sweeping statements, this is actually a load of rubbish. The faction did stop being so involved in interfactional intrigues and Convention politics, because they did have a lot of work to do, and centererd in rebuilding. But wizards kept going our in their own businesses, visitiors kept coming to Hogemeade, prank wars and Quidditch went on, and so on.
Of course, fen have never seen an explanation that cannot be improved with several extra helpings of melodramatics, so the Regency somehow has become the established truth in memory, even to wizards themselves who did not actually retreat -their personal experiences becoming the "exception".
The post-war reconstruction looked hopeless at first, but in the end it managed to bring back life to a faction that had been steadily losing ground to the sci-fi fen. The Minister, both in the last few months of her mandate and after she was re-elected, decided to hold the bull by the horns and stop the dangerous spiral of emo before it could even start; she was going to bring magic back to her faction kicking and screaming -and if necessary, it wold be her personally the one to deliver any kickings needed.
She signed on a number of magical proyects, some silly and some deep (a few of which even had results). She rebuilt, and where necessary, built, the armed forces and he Aurors, and had then design new defenses. She got the magical society movers and shakers help in stamping out the nascent anti-catgilrl racism, and all other related Pureblood thought. She reached over to all fantasy fen and minor factions. She plotted the complete reconstruction of the capital at Hogsmeade, which until then had been a rather boring medieval british village, and turned it into a full fantasy city of soaring towers and floating castles. She impulsed the construction of dozens of smaller magical settlements in the Belt near 10 Hygiea, and had her goverment help any wizard who wished for solitude to build their own magical tower in an asteroid, and still keep contact with the rest of the faction.
By 2020, the faction had recovered a vitality that many who had seen Hogspeade after the Howarts Battle would not believe.
Myths of Fenspace: The Statute of Secrecy.
In 2019 the soviet research lab in Black Mesa published he results of astonishing experiments with the existence of a magical force, called "Manasphere", and the scandal about the Fespace Catalog redacted parts, wich included magic, exploded.
Many looked at the wizards for their reaction, and were suprised by the calm way the reacted to the news. This gave birth to the rumor about the Statute of Secrecy, a myth so widespread that quite a few conspiracy theorists are certain it was spread purposely.
The Statue, in the most common variation of the myth, is a secret Referendum that all Wizards made sometime during the Mad Eye Regency, were they agreed to keep the existence of magic secret. How they discovered magic comes in three man variants:
-Noah Gordon personally told the Minister the secret, and gave a copy of the unredacted catalog. Depending on who you ask, that was done due to friendship, it being The Right Thing, unclear (but much speculated upon) blackmail material, and even a torrid affair between Noah and the minister of Magic herself.
-The wizards stole the secret from Noah, by themselves or with the help of another fantasy faction (Ninjas being the most common culprit)
-The Wizards discovered the existence of magic independiently sometime before 2019.
Wizards themselves refute the existence of this Statute, but they also claim that they have been doing Magic all along. This has stumped any conspiracy researchers, because any published magical papers before the revelation do not actually make any distinction between Handwavium and magic, so they cannot point to a moment when wizards started writing about "real" magic; the first wizarding published magical study that mentioned Magic and Handwavium as different forces is a comparative of Handwavium magical rituals, and which parts of then are using Magic; this was published in 2021, unfortunately for conspiracy theorists.
My take on the wizards, 2014-2020, version two:
The Mad Eye Regency:
After the Boskone war, the wizards were heavily damaged, and the entire faction was on the verge of a downwards spiral of depression. For several years after the war, the entire faction retreated to seclusion, dealing only with other Fantasy fen, and began to arm thenselves and rebuild. Fen call those years the Mad Eye Regency, due to the paranoia and preparations the faction went through those years. The Regency lasted from the 2015 elections, which saw the war minirter Cynthia Lucklold narrowly avoid losing her post, to 2020, when the wizards finally signed the PEPPER teatry, the last important faction to do so, and returned to fenspace.
As with most sweeping statements, this is actually a load of rubbish. The faction did stop being so involved in interfactional intrigues and Convention politics, because they did have a lot of work to do, and centererd in rebuilding. But wizards kept going our in their own businesses, visitiors kept coming to Hogemeade, prank wars and Quidditch went on, and so on.
Of course, fen have never seen an explanation that cannot be improved with several extra helpings of melodramatics, so the Regency somehow has become the established truth in memory, even to wizards themselves who did not actually retreat -their personal experiences becoming the "exception".
The post-war reconstruction looked hopeless at first, but in the end it managed to bring back life to a faction that had been steadily losing ground to the sci-fi fen. The Minister, both in the last few months of her mandate and after she was re-elected, decided to hold the bull by the horns and stop the dangerous spiral of emo before it could even start; she was going to bring magic back to her faction kicking and screaming -and if necessary, it wold be her personally the one to deliver any kickings needed.
She signed on a number of magical proyects, some silly and some deep (a few of which even had results). She rebuilt, and where necessary, built, the armed forces and he Aurors, and had then design new defenses. She got the magical society movers and shakers help in stamping out the nascent anti-catgilrl racism, and all other related Pureblood thought. She reached over to all fantasy fen and minor factions. She plotted the complete reconstruction of the capital at Hogsmeade, which until then had been a rather boring medieval british village, and turned it into a full fantasy city of soaring towers and floating castles. She impulsed the construction of dozens of smaller magical settlements in the Belt near 10 Hygiea, and had her goverment help any wizard who wished for solitude to build their own magical tower in an asteroid, and still keep contact with the rest of the faction.
By 2020, the faction had recovered a vitality that many who had seen Hogspeade after the Howarts Battle would not believe.
Myths of Fenspace: The Statute of Secrecy.
In 2019 the soviet research lab in Black Mesa published he results of astonishing experiments with the existence of a magical force, called "Manasphere", and the scandal about the Fespace Catalog redacted parts, wich included magic, exploded.
Many looked at the wizards for their reaction, and were suprised by the calm way the reacted to the news. This gave birth to the rumor about the Statute of Secrecy, a myth so widespread that quite a few conspiracy theorists are certain it was spread purposely.
The Statue, in the most common variation of the myth, is a secret Referendum that all Wizards made sometime during the Mad Eye Regency, were they agreed to keep the existence of magic secret. How they discovered magic comes in three man variants:
-Noah Gordon personally told the Minister the secret, and gave a copy of the unredacted catalog. Depending on who you ask, that was done due to friendship, it being The Right Thing, unclear (but much speculated upon) blackmail material, and even a torrid affair between Noah and the minister of Magic herself.
-The wizards stole the secret from Noah, by themselves or with the help of another fantasy faction (Ninjas being the most common culprit)
-The Wizards discovered the existence of magic independiently sometime before 2019.
Wizards themselves refute the existence of this Statute, but they also claim that they have been doing Magic all along. This has stumped any conspiracy researchers, because any published magical papers before the revelation do not actually make any distinction between Handwavium and magic, so they cannot point to a moment when wizards started writing about "real" magic; the first wizarding published magical study that mentioned Magic and Handwavium as different forces is a comparative of Handwavium magical rituals, and which parts of then are using Magic; this was published in 2021, unfortunately for conspiracy theorists.